A short while ago someone mentioned a couple of tips for taking better bike photos. Was it cranks horizontal and rear derailleur at full stretch? Any other tips? I think that bidon cages sometimes spoil the aesthetics of a bike. I'll never be a Ray Dobbins but I'd like to do a bit better.

I like the rim decals to be in a similar orientation on both wheels as well as the valves. I like to see the biddon cage but I can see where it could be distracting. I like to see the RH crank arm pointing to around 2:30 o'clock or pointing down to continue the line of the seat tube.

Location baby!... find a location that suits the bike. If you have an SLR camera shoot it on a longer lense to blur out the back ground a bit and make the bike stand out a bit, it will also reduce the distortion that happens when shooting on a wider lense. If you haven't got your own lighting ( most people )... shot it in early morning or late afternoon when the sun is a bit lower and the light is a bit warmer. It will make all the metal work sparkle. Get photoshop or similar for the finishing touches .

Aesthetic examples:Tyre labels in line with tyre innertube valves.Quick releases both on non drive side.Saddle horizontal to the groundbottom of drops horizontal to the ground/or lined up to point at the rear brake. I read it in the internetz.One neat strip of tape around the bar tape to finish ofhub logo on front hub should face the same as rear and read from the right.-Rim labels should read from the right.-Cable routing to be as neat as neat can be.-Seat and bar tape to be the same colour. Or not. It depends.etc, etc

PhotographingValves both at the lowest point, highest point or somewhere else as long as they're in the same place. Can be hidden to astound if no tyre labels present.logo on crankset should be upright-Photograph should be from the right.-Geared bikes should have chain on big ring.-seat post should show sufficiently, but bars & saddle to be same height. (Rando-luv)-pedals should be fixed in the ridden position, not at rest. (by tightening bearings just for the shot. Ha.)-Angle of shot should be such that lh drop is all but hidden by rh drop.-Downtube shifters should be parallel.-Either lh crank to be in line with seat tube, or rh crank in line with chain stay, ahead or behind bottom bracket. In line with something anyways.-Background to be unconfusing. And any lines to speak to frame tubing.

The style guide is good in as much as it makes person actually think about the positions of various bits and pieces. Some of them are silly though; I like downtube shifters to be not parallel and pedals as ridden, daaaaaaggy!

I earn a crust as a phototgrapher (credentials here). You can write all the "rules" you want but good photography comes back to content, composition and lighting. The rules above apply mostly to composition.

Bikes are a really tough subject. A bike is bunch of skinny tubes with a lot of air in between. Air is invisible. You should give some, actually a lot, of thought into what is going to fill that space. Garage doors, brick walls and white, black or grey in a studio are the most popular options, they're the ones that provide the most reward per unit of effort.

A fan of oblique composing/framing here. If you picture the bike being at the centre of a square box. Then envisage the box having intersects across every diagonally opposite corner, through the centre of the box; that's 4 lines. I try and do most (not all shots), in that rough line-of-sight. This tends to add some 3D to what is a pretty 2D machine.The shots I put up of the Pegasus in 'Let's see what...' kind of show that, I think (Gallery link there). Not a big fan of the 90º/0º level shot. IMO, getting angles (vertical and horizontal together), is the main prerequisite. Then there's ugly stuff in the background to be left out/taken out.Yes, early morning/late afternoon give better light, too, as suggested earlier.These are all very amateur suggestions; I'm no pro.

Lots of steel bikes wrote:Very nice! Do you have a pre photoshop image you could show and perhaps share some of the photoshop techniques you used to get to the final image.My apologies if no photoshop used.

the pre-photo shop image would be a raw file... All I would have done is brightened it up. Cant remember exactly but probably used 3 lights... 2 on the background and one front on. The front on one would have blasted through a white sheet (as metal only reflects what it sees, you need a big white light source to get the nice reflections ).Photography is my job as well http://icj.carbonmade.com/But usually people

Great topic and tips guys. Some impressive examples too.Very timely for me as Ive just finished off a bike and I'm waiting for some nice weather to try a get a few pictures before I hand it over to its new owner.

I agree that a great backdrop can make a big difference. A couple of my favorite bike pictures are ‘real’ scenes from my travels with the bike itself in the background rather than being the main subject.